Sunday, March 25, 2012

My First Wedding Expo!

Okay, so obviously I'm obsessed with weddings. Enough to get me to wake up before 6am on a Sunday, which let me tell you..is not an easy task. Today I volunteered with a club that I am part of at school called Special Events Society which is a student chapter of ISES. We worked the Simply Elegant Platinum Wedding Expo at the Marriott Long Wharf in Boston!

The owner of Simply Elegant Expos, Gina Karlsson is a woman on a mission. Besides running these wedding expos, she also has a several other ventures. One of the most prominent is her magazine (Simply Elegant Platinum Weddings Magazine) which I got a copy of today and it is great. She also runs Simply Elegant Linens and Platinum Weddings Group. All for a woman who majored in nursing, impressive.

Celebrity wedding planner, Collin Cowie, was present at the event. He gave a presentation, which I am so sad I missed because I was upstairs preparing for the crazy chaos of a fashion show that was about to ensue. A lucky couple won a free wedding valued at $200,000 and Collin is planning it! I would absolutely die for that. Luckily we got a picture in with him that I wish was up online so that I could post it here.

When my day started soooo early, I was thinking 10 hours of volunteering! I am literally going to die! That is how many hours I work at my paid job between two days! Haha! But it actually went by pretty quickly and there was a bunch of different jobs to do which I enjoy more than just sitting around waiting for time to pass. I started off helping set the tables, then went down to manage and coordinate all the vendors coming in through the loading dock. So many of the vendors were so thankful and appreciative that someone was down there controlling the traffic flow in and out of the one loading dock and that they had people to help bring up all their supplies to the ballroom, so it felt good to have my help appreciated. Next we greeted brides and their guests as they arrived and handed out copies of Gina's magazine (which hits stands in New England next week) to all the brides. Then I got to be a dresser for the bridal fashion show. I am used to quick changes from when I danced, but trying to switch girls into different bridal gowns in 3 minutes and completely pin them because they were swallowing the models up was no easy task. Forget accessories and bouquets, we were lucky they were dressed on the runway. Through everything we had to work with for the fashion show I think we did a pretty good job. Then we got to walk around and enjoy the expo ourselves and taste some yummy cake. Finally we helped clean things up a little and then the 10 hours were over and we were back on our way to Providence!

All in all, it was worth the early morning wake up and just further reconfirmed the fact that I definitely want to work in the special events field, especially weddings! I hope I get to work another wedding expo soon!